“It won’t do you any good if we all drown,” she said, trying to reason with him. She used her free hand to tug on his sleeve and get his attention again. “The disks are all you really need. Your scientists can unscramble the transmission. Leave Jonathan and me here. You’ll travel quicker without us.”
Frank stared down at her, his eyes narrowed as he thought about her offer. He slowly smiled. “I’m getting an extra half million for you, sweet buns.” He shrugged. “Make me an offer I can’t refuse, and I’ll think about it.”
Frank started to pull her onto the ice then, but Jonathan, whom Tom was holding at gunpoint, finally spoke. “She has a five-week-old son, Frank. What if you take the disks to AeroSaqii and I pay you for Grace?”
Frank turned to face Jonathan. “How much?”
Jonathan straightened and stepped forward. “One million,” he said.
Frank laughed. “How about two?”
Jonathan paled but nodded. “Two,” he agreed. He reached out for Grace’s hand, but Frank pulled her away.
“No. You’re both going with us,” he said. “We get off this mountain and back to civilization, then we work out the details. You get the money, Stanhope, and then I’ll turn Grace over.”
That decided, Frank pulled her forward again, ignoring her now frantic struggles. “We’ll go with you,”
Grace said, “but at least go around. It’s not safe to walk across the pond.”
“There they are,” Frank said, not paying attention to her. “I can see the snowmobiles.”
Grace squinted through the increasing daylight and scanned the opposite shore. A good quarter-mile away she could just make out three snowmobiles with sleds attached to them, parked on the edge of the forest by the pond. But she didn’t see anyone standing beside them.
Grace sat down. Frank wouldn’t shoot her; she was worth too much money to him. He skidded to a halt and nearly fell backward because he wouldn’t let go of her wrist.
“Dammit. Get up.”
“No.”
He pulled a gun from his pocket and set the barrel in front of her nose.
She sneered at him. “Two million bucks, Frank.”
“Dammit to hell.” He shoved his gun in his pocket and grabbed her by both arms, lifting her up and tossing her over his shoulder.
They made it almost to the middle of the pond before the ice cracked. Frank suddenly stilled, slowly setting Grace on her feet and then moving several steps away. She immediately lay down on her back, hoping to distribute her weight over as large an area as she could.
“Shit,” Jonathan whispered on an indrawn breath, also stilling at the realization they’d overtaxed the ice.
Tom, still holding his gun trained on Jonathan, moved several steps away, his eyes wide with terror.
Wayne, who had run ahead only a few yards, also stopped and whirled to face them, then suddenly started inching his way backward to the opposite shore.
Grace turned and looked back in the direction they’d come from. Where was Grey? He was not being a very good Superman. She caught sight of a movement just off to the right about a hundred yards away.
Father Daar stepped out of the woods and onto a boulder by the edge of the pond.
Grace blinked. Twice. It was the priest, all right, but he wasn’t wearing his usual black wool cassock. He was dressed in a long, billowing green robe, and his crooked cherrywood cane was now taller than he was.
Where had he come from?
“You lie still, girl,” the priest said to her, his voice carrying over the surface of the pond with gentle strength. “Don’t you move so much as a muscle,” he added, lifting his cane and pointing it at the five of them.
There was another sudden pop, sending a wave of vibrations through the ice. The entire pond shook.
Grace snapped her head around and saw Wayne inching his way to shore. “Stand still,” she said, spreading her arms and legs wider.
“Holy shit,” Frank said, backing up another step.
“Hold still!” Jonathan hissed at him.
“Grace!”
Grace lifted her head at the sound of her name being bellowed with a force that vibrated the air around them. It had come from someplace past her feet. She squinted through the drizzle and saw Grey, a good two hundred yards further down the shore from Father Daar, step onto the ice.
“Go back!” she yelled at him. “You’re going to drown us!”
Grey wasn’t paying attention to her, though. He was pointing his sword at Daar.
His sword? Superman hadn’t brought a sensible weapon to fight off the villains; the man was charging to the rescue with an antique sword. Grace didn’t know whether to scream or cry.
“Back off, old man,” Grey shouted, walking over the ice toward Father Daar. “Don’t do it.”
The priest either couldn’t hear him or didn’t care. Daar chanted loudly, his eyes closed and his stick pointed at Grace and the four men with her.
The mantle of ice under her back suddenly shuddered, and Grace watched in horror as Grey fell into the freezing water. He disappeared for a few seconds before he shot back to the surface and stood in water only as deep as his waist. The ice beneath her rippled again in undulating shock waves, and Grace took a large gulp of air and held her breath, gritting her teeth to prepare for a dunking that didn’t come.
Miraculously, the ice beneath her held.
She looked back at Grey. He just stood there as if he couldn’t feel the freezing water, staring at the priest, his sword raised as if he intended to throw it like a lance.
The heavy, humid air around them suddenly crackled with electricity, humming so sharply it hurt her ears.
The sky began to sparkle with such brilliance Grace had to cover her eyes with her hand. Lightning snapped over the surface of the pond, sending tingles of awareness through Grace’s body that stopped just short of being painful.
Grace peeked through her fingers at Grey. He was frantically breaking the ice with the hilt of his sword while shouting something at Daar in a language she didn’t recognize.
“No!” she heard him yell as he climbed onto land and began running again, ignoring the swirling, electrically charged air that surrounded the priest. Grey swung his sword in a long, sweeping arc and sliced Daar’s stick cleanly in half.
If she lived to be a hundred, Grace would never be able to explain what happened next.
Daar’s stick, now two distinct pieces, floated in the air as if held up by strings. The two pieces of wood twisted and twitched, bolts of lightning shooting from them in every direction. Sparks rained through the air like fireworks, spraying upward and out in flashes of sizzling white energy.
A stream of brilliant blue light suddenly appeared from the clouds over TarStone, capturing one of the sticks as it danced in the air. Grace watched, fascinated, as that stick vibrated the merest of seconds, then suddenly flew out over the pond and landed on her. She stared, unmoving, as it hummed with the resonance of a purring cat against her chest, enveloping her in crystal-clear blue light.
The other stick fell back to the ground with a loud thud, striking a rock and shooting out a blast of laser-sharp energy toward the five of them that was so bright Grace was sure she would be blinded for life.
The percussion of the explosion beside her finished the job of shattering the ice they were lying on. She grabbed the stick on her chest as she fell into the freezing water.
Only it wasn’t cold.
Or dark.
As the water closed in over her head and Grace sank toward the bottom of the pond, the stick she clung to enveloped her in a warm blue light so bright it shone through her eyelids. Slowly, and without effort on her part, she rose back to the surface until her head was above water.
A pair of strong hands suddenly grabbed her and began pulling her through the water. She couldn’t see or hear a thing. Spots danced in her eyes, and her ears still rang with dulled thunder from the explosion.